Foreignization In The Context Of Cultural Globalizaion

Beginning from the co-relationship between language, culture and translation and based on the agreements and disagreements proposed by the Chinese and Western scholars on both domestication and foreignization strateges, this thesis points out that translation is not only a transmission of language, but also a cross-cultural communication; cultural factors interfere with the transference of language and culture. As two major translation strategies, domestication and foreignization are both necessary for cross-cultural communication. However, since the fourth translation boom, foreignization has began to draw more attention that it deserves. This is mainly due to the more and more significant trend of cultural fusion. Through a comparision and analysis of translation of words or phrases containing cultural factors in the two English versions of the Chinese classical novel HongLou Meng, the author finds that foreignizing strategy does better in translating cultural words and then illustrates the causes for that from the dimension of cultural fusion.With the gradual development of economic globalization in today's world, cultural globalizaion is becoming more and more prominent, too. However, culture belongs to "soft power", which is conditioned by economy and politics, thus there are "strong culture" and "weak culture". In the process of cultural globalization, a few western developed countries, especially the United States, pursue a strategy of cultural hegemony to retain their ascendancy. Weak culture is bing suppressed and gradually replaced by strong culture. So,as a bridge over two different languages and cultures, translation is expected not just to convey the meaning of the source text, but also to transfer and protect the source culture. Translators must resist cultural hegemony, protect cultural identity, respect cultural uniqueness, protect the differences of the world cultures, and make harmonious development among different cultures. Thus the choice of translation strategies should take the premise of respecting the features of different cultures, protecting coexistence of multi-cultures, and preventing cultural assimilation of the weak culture by the strong one. Thus foreignizing translation is quite indispensable.Finally, the thesis points out the necessity of adopting foreignizing strategy in maintaining cultural differences in the context of cultural globalization and its further studies in this field.